


Hell's Heroes

by RedRidingHood24



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mental Instability, Pack Bonding, Sleepovers, Teen Wolf Reverse Bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 13:32:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4566480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedRidingHood24/pseuds/RedRidingHood24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The pack struggles to cope with their mental states after everything they've been through. Stiles worries for his father, Lydia is troubled by her Banshee abilities, Scott deals with the physical and emotional healing of those around him while he tries to help himself. Appearances made by Isaac and Boyd, along with Allison boxing and exercising to relieve the pain caused by her family. The teens face their own personal Hells alone and together. Written for the Teen Wolf Reverse Bang, partnered with Artist Cee_m on LiveJournal. She made a beautiful video that inspired this story so please check out the link to her LJ here:  http://cee-m.livejournal.com/  Her Video here! : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wj0HrUwfaw  Please go check her out!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hell's Heroes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Teen Wolf Reverse Bang partnered with Artist Cee_M !! Check out her awesome video that inspired this story! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wj0HrUwfaw

Hell can take many forms.

(Stiles' POV)

About once a month, Scott spends the night like he used to when we were kids. We order a pizza, sit together on the beat-up loveseat downstairs and watch T.V all night. It usually starts with an old series we both like and then moves onto the strange documentaries when the early hours of the morning approach. This particular documentary told of rituals other cultures used in cases of the death of a loved one. From blood sacrifice to climbing trees and jumping off the tops, none of them felt far from the things we've seen in person. "Scott?"

"Yeah, buddy?" Scott rips open a new bag of barbeque chips. 

"Do you ever think about hell?" He doesn't stop chewing but his brows go down. 

"Like the place?" Salty dust puffs from his lips. 

I don't know how to explain what I mean so I just say, "yeah, the place." Scott pulls his feet up, preparing to talk to me. 

"I don't think I believe in the place. I just never understood why it would exist. So no, I don't really think of it. Do you?" 

"No." Not the place. I think of how I feel inside my head. I think of the way my body shuts down when my dad breathes out his whiskey sigh after a long day. I think of the feeling of my neck and ears getting wet when I cry lying on my back. "I'll be right back," I say to Scott and slowly unfold my nighttime legs from the couch. 

I pour a small glass of water and sip it, leaning against the counter in the kitchen. "Okay Stiles, you're fine," I speak into the glass. 

"Yo, do you guys have any ham and cheese?" The room is lit by the refrigerator opening, Scott moving cartons of eggs and tubs of butter around. 

I take as deep a breath as I can and use all of it for my answer. "Dad ate all of it but there's turkey in the back. The Mountain Hill imported kind you like." Scott puts his entire arm in the fridge, toppling over a few pudding cups and half a bowl of tin foiled strawberries. "Yeah I picked up a pound at Rocco's when I found out we both had a free night." 

"Thanks, buddy!" He gives me his lopsided smile, his chin moving more to one side. Non-werewolf teeth take a bite of a shredded chunk of turkey deli meat. 

"Want some bread?" Scott shakes his head. 

Around a mouthful of poultry, he speaks. "No, perfect like this." I realize that in the time it took to help Scott, worried about the contents of my fridge, my breathing has regulated. Distraction is key. 

"Do you remember when we took bubble baths together when we were little?" I ask Scott, drunk on 3AM. 

"How could I forget? You almost drowned me once." 

"Accidentally on purpose. Why don't we do that anymore?" Scott turns his body completely around to look at me. 

"Um, because we are both six feet tall and our genitals are fully developed." I begin to protest but I stop mid-syllable. Scott always put too few bubbles in anyway. 

Sleep catches up to us eventually and we retreat to my room. Scott flicks off the bedside light and pushes his sock feet under the blankets. "Do you want the fan on or off?" 

"On please." I turn the standing fan on oscillate and crack the window open so it circulates the air. I love my nights with Scott but they make me think of my mother. Sitting at the kitchen counter for dinner was an everyday thing as kids; complete with mom's special chicken nuggets and fruit salad. 

Scott's nose whistles quietly and the covers move up and down with his chest. Sometimes I forget that his lungs are superb along with his werewolf-ness. The asthma attack-prone little boy he was is not my slumber party partner anymore. Inhalers used to populate my house as if they were mine. His body works on its own now. 

(Allison's POV) 

I bounce on the rubber of my sneakers. My right arm bends and hits the bag, the chain jingling as it swings back into my waiting kick. A noise is forced from my chest when I use all my strength to send the bag flying into the poles holding it up. I used to punch until I could feel my wrists pounding with blood, my fingers shaking and bruised. I would imagine the bag as my mother, for not having the bravery to reject the original code. I imagined it was my father, for enforcing the Argent law, for being a dictator more than a parent. Sometimes I would even picture myself. 

"Fight back, Allison!" I coughed and wiped the sweat from my face. Grabbing and kicking the bag hurt me when it shouldn't have, when I thought I was helping myself. "Stop crying!" It seems like hundreds of years ago Lydia came over and found me in the basement. Her hair was pulled up in a curly ponytail, sparkling bobby pins keeping her bangs from falling in her face. 

"Are you ready for our run? Allison?" I was slamming my body into the bag, huffing, gloves off, knuckles bloody. "Allison!" Lydia's hands took hold of my shoulders. I'm sure she took a few hits herself from my jabbing elbows. "Stop Allison!" Finally she had her arms wrapped around my chest, pulling me away from the equipment. She removed a scrunchy from her wrist to pull my hair from my face. "Why are you doing this?" Lydia had both hands on my arms to hold my fists down. 

"I couldn't protect her. I didn't work hard enough." My chest makes a strained sound and whatever makeup I had on was making its way down my face. 

"You have to be kind to yourself, Allison; tell yourself what you want to hear." She sat with me until I stopped shaking. "You're so strong." 

This is why I stop after twenty minutes. This is why I massage my hands afterward, why I take a gentle shower to calm myself before breakfast. I don't scrub my skin mercilessly anymore. I don't tremble under the too hot water stinging my raw body. It takes a lot, more than I thought possible, to not raise the temperature of my brain cloaked in steam and sweat. 86 days since I sat on the edge of the tub and gagged into the double sink, unable to stand. 86 days since I wrapped my goose bumped body in a towel and snuck into my bedroom to lay down, terrified that I wouldn't make it. 86 days since the black spots haunted the corners of my vision. 

(Scott's POV)

On busy occasions, my days begin with holding the hands of the sick. "I'll get you some soup, Mr. Newman." 

"Thank you, Scott." Mr. Newman has been my neighbor since I was a kid. He was diagnosed with lung cancer two months ago and is in the care of a specialist at Beacon Hills Memorial. He doesn't know I visit him on weekends for purposes worth more than a bowl of tomato soup. When I hold his hands to move him from bed to couch, I take a few drops of pain from his skin. Crinkled and rough from working his entire life away at a saw mill, his fingers squeeze mine back and he tells me about his son Johnathan. "Johnathan knew he wanted to coach when he saw you and that Stilinski kid hitting each other in the ribs with baseball bats in your backyard." Stiles eventually got pretty good at hitting home runs and joined little league, but I stopped practicing with him after The Great Clavicle Fracture of 2001. Johnathan died in battle a few years ago but I play along with Mr. Newman. "I'm so proud of Johnathan." 

After my dad left and my mother was struggling for money, fresh-out-of-school Johnathan would bring us dinner. He and his girlfriend would also clean our house while my mother was working. He never got to come back from overseas and coach baseball. "I'm proud of him too." 

When the nurses are busy I do the menial tasks for some of the older patients. "Just a trim," he says. I swish the razor in a cup of soapy water and spread shaving cream around the back of his neck. The 'scratch scratch' sound of the blades along the stubbly hairs are hardly audible. My father never taught me to shave. Stiles' father did. 

Stiles and I would go to middle school just shaven even though there was nothing but peach fuzz, and bleed from our faces. Days like that are barely a spot in my brain anymore. I wipe Mr. Newman's neck with a wet towel and toss it into a nearby hamper. "Thank you," he says and takes my hand in his, patting the back of it. Instinctually, I pull some of his pain, or sadness, or that deep feeling I can't quite place. It’s like an old Front Porch Memory; something with sweet tea and chewing tobacco. On Christmas I received a postcard from Deaton. It read: "the definition of an Empath is a person with the paranormal ability to apprehend the mental or emotional state of another individual. Stay strong." 

(Lydia's POV) 

Weekends in the math lab are hell for my muscles. "Lydia, can you take these equations home? I thought I’d have time for them but I don't," Danny pleads and pushes a folder in my direction. We'd just finished setting the tools up in the Chem room and graded tests for our Trigonometry teacher, I didn't plan on doing any more when I got home. I want to yell but it's not Danny's fault, it's Mrs. Krentz'. She has to leave early to tend to her husband's 'needs' so there is always extra work to be done. 

Danny and the others leave soon after I open up the folder and pull out six worksheets. Ten equations on each, waiting to be solved and checked to hand out on Monday. I do half of one page and sit back in my chair, rubbing my eyes. "Lydia Martin." I turn my head. 

"Huh?" The room is full of turned up chairs from the janitor's cleanup but no people. I breathe in and my chest crackles. Something is coming up my throat and it's brought along a searing headache. I tap my pencil to make a different sound, to distract from the whispers in my ears. 

Mrs. Krentz must be crazy if she thinks I'm willing to take on her work. I stand and pull the hem of my skirt and tuck my hair behind my ears. The papers make their way from my hands to the floor of the hallways. I avoid driving past the cemetery but disembodied voices still come from my air vents. "Right turn," between three clicks, "turn," four clicks. My nails puncture the steering wheel until I pull into the driveway of my house. 

When I open the door, a bubble pops somewhere. Everything has more substance, better texture, less sound. "Hi, honey." This voice has a body. My mother. "There's soup in the crockpot when you're ready." My father's silverware fight each other in the kitchen and I don't feel like screaming. 

"I'll get some in a little bit. I need a shower." My heels come off first. They're placed beside my closet on a wooden rack. Clothes are to be removed in a dance. My hair gathers inside my shirt halfway between my chest and my nose; a cotton tent. Bra is next, skirt on the carpet with panties to join. Most of the time, when I scream, everything else is incredibly silent. Channeling is something I normally don't do well. 

Showering is the next step. I concentrate on the padding of my bare feet on the tile floor, the squeaking of the faucet handles when the water begins to shoot from the showerhead. I step in and sit down. Moisture has collected in the depths where the tub connects to the shower walls and I place my head on it. Steam turns my chest pink, makes my makeup drip and my hair frizz. A sigh pulls some of my voice with it and echoes around me. Water droplets are gentle by the time they reach my thighs; just saying hello with a little heat. I see what I hear in these small moments. 

(Isaac's POV)

There are three things Boyd is better at than me: math is one, sports is second. He proves the second by shoving me down in the dirt and taking off on the trail. "Get with it, Lahey!" Boyd's feet kick up dust in my face. I growl before I push myself up on my arms. Something about the cold air makes my hands tingle. I feel the familiar pain of my nails growing at a faster than normal rate. Do. Not. Shift. What was Derek's mantra again? I bite the inside of my mouth and send my feet free, growling again when I pass Boyd. Control is the third thing. Boyd can keep his eyes clear while I fight the heat beneath my skin. My gums bleed when my teeth sharpen inside of them. Morning jogs are not for the faint of heart. 

(Stiles' POV) 

My dad is working the night shift. I send him off with a midnight back of fruit and a granola bar. When he leaves for the night, I almost always spend an hour sitting in the dining room. After that, I sample a few aged whiskeys and let them sit within my stomach after they've invaded every corner of my mouth and throat. I spout words to myself and laugh the paranoia out. I'm not alone often. Being alone at night is different. There's no risk of a knock at the door, there's nothing to be done. I don't wonder what my friends are doing. Hopefully it's not this. When I'm in between emotions, I make myself a late dinner and when I'm finished, I put the dishes in the sink. 

One too many glasses meet each other and break into pieces over the garbage disposal. "Dammit!" My shoulders shake, adding all of my irritations together. I make a beeline to my room and sit on the edge of the bed. I breathe deeply, too quickly, small sobs trying to get in on it. Next is the fear of vomiting and the chest pain. Somehow I rebuild myself and clean up the glass from the sink. I gather clothes but don't take a shower yet because I know this will happen a few more times tonight. 

Head fuzzy and eyes puffed and red, I step into the warm shower water. I lean against the wall, accidently bumping shampoo bottles with my hips, and hug myself. Making sure I don't stay in too long, my phone buzzes with a text on the medicine cabinet. I wrap a towel around my waist and read the message. ScottyBoy: L8 Nite Chinese? 

Decked in a pair of jeans and one of my dad's Beacon County PD sweatshirts, I sit outside and wait for Scott. I've put the whiskey bottles back in their cabinet, cleaned the dishes, and brushed my teeth. The house looks as if a tornado hadn't run through it. 

Scott's dirt bike burps up the driveway. "Hey baby, need a ride?" He so gracefully drops his helmet in the mud.

"Shut up." I roll my eyes and try to fit myself on the back seat that's not really there. 

"And we're off!" Scott turns to look at me and then scoffs, pulling another helmet out of the back pouch. He shoves it down on my head and forces me to buckle it. I hear him say "humans" under his breath before his dimples give away the smile. "What was I....oh yeah! And we're off!" It's a little anticlimactic when we slowly back down the driveway with our tippy toes on the ground. The engine put-puts and speeds up when we make it onto the actual road. When Scott takes a sudden left I realize we aren't going to the usual buffet Lydia likes, but an old favorite of mine. 

"Dirty Spoons For Less? Aw, you are so thoughtful!" I sarcastically bat my eyelashes on his cheek the best I can with a helmet on. Scott picked the name when we ordered take-out from what is actually called The Paper Plate, and received a Chinese\Italian mash up of a pizza with fish and mozzarella on it. The pieces didn't match up, giving us the sneaking suspicion that each piece was from other half-eaten pizzas. The bag of condiments was filled with soy sauce crusted pasticware. A huge waste of ten dollars. Every walk of life works here. With questionable food from around the world, you get a strange mixture of broke college students and old people as employees. 

"Fish pizza again?" Scott glances at me and then at the 20 foot long buffet. 

"Are we even sure it was fish?" My stomach switches places with my bladder. 

"Noodles it is." I feel ten again at the buffet, but I'm taller than the dishes this time. Scott ladles soup into a bowl and gets a plate of fortune cookies for us to share. He takes them to our selected table before coming back to get his actual meal. Turns out there aren't many people who crave a random assortment of food at four in the morning. 

Rice meets chicken nuggets meets wasabi meets ice cream. Scott slurps noodles that stick to his chin and I shove pieces of chicken into my mouth. I can feel some sort of sauce on my shirt but I'm too distracted by my ice cream to care. "Can't take you anywhere," Scott huffs and leans across the table to tuck a napkin into the line of my collar. I resist the urge to do my best impression of a baby which may or may not include the excretion of bodily fluids. 

Scott cracks open a cookie. "Lucky numbers: 15, 24, and 3." He turns the paper slip over. "I'm with stupid... Stiles, how does it know?!" I stare at him and slowly push mashed potatoes through my clenched teeth, reaching up to crank my ear like a handle. 

I don't bother wiping my face before picking up my cookie and crack it in half, giving the edible bits to Scott to satisfy his sweet tooth. "It says 'keep going'." 

"Aren't we supposed to say 'in bed' after?" 

"It's way past your bedtime." When I look up I almost see him as that ten year old boy with the crooked jaw. I take away his tattoo, that thing behind his heart, the tired lines in his face. His dimples give him away again. 

The bell on the door rings. The click of heels and a fatherly throat clearing fills the room. "Oh yeah, I may have sent out a mass text." 

"Got off early and picked up some lovely ladies," my dad says. Allison and Lydia take seats next to us and my dad, still in his uniform, heads to the food. 

"Sheriff..." Isaac puts out his hands and gestures to his body, clearly not a lady. 

"And Isaac!" He pops his head up from a fake potted plant hanging over a metal bin of macaroni salad. Melissa smooths Scott's hair and pulls the bowl of soup over he'd gone up to get seconds of. 

"I thought everyone could use a night off," Scott whispers to me and I smile. The dingy glass windows hold us in this place I've dined in every stage of my life. I close my eyes and listen to the high and low laughs, the breathing, and the humanity in the room. Right now, it's impossible to believe in anything called Hell. If Hell is a feeling not a place, then this must be its counterpart. I breathe in and fill the invisible parts of my body with this unbearable lightness. 


End file.
